God bless all of you with faith and grace the learn the truth.

I can’t spell ether

Wilson

Were the comments that Joseph recorded in the sacred grove as coming from the Saviour a figment of his imagination? If not, then the answers to your questions are found in the record of that experience.

For one thing, the term “apostasy” means turning from one’s religious faith–not turning from the “truth,” however that is defined. A Catholic who joins the LDS church is an apostate from the Catholic church. When we talk of apostasy, we should remember that it’s a relative term. Apostasy can be good or bad, depending on one’s perspective. In fact, our missionary effort is intended primarily to promote apostasy; i.e., a turning away from our converts’ religious traditions.

The idea that the gospel was taken from the earth seems to me, on its face, to be a historical and doctrinal misconception. Some aspects of the gospel, such as temple ordinances, may have been taken, but the fundamental principles of loving God and others, the Beatitudes, etc., have remained since the time of Christ.

More importantly, the Book of Mormon teaches that God speaks to all people, all over the world. If so, in what sense are the religions that arise from this form of inspiration “false”? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that other religions, including the non-LDS Christian world, are adapted to the people they serve, and can also be inspired by God?

There’s much more to discuss here if this thread isn’t dead.

1) The priesthood was taken from the earth. When? Obviously people other than the apostles had the priesthood, they could have kept ordaining people. In fact, according to Joseph Smith, we don’t even need apostles for the church to go forward, merely somebody with the fulness of the priesthood. Why is it that we assume that as soon as the other 11 apostles died, John went and hid in a cave and suddenly all of the priesthood ordinations that had happen up to that point suddenly became void. The truth is that the priesthood could have continued for a long, long time after the death of the apostles.

2) The truth was taken from the earth. Again, when? Well, we answer, when the doctrines started to change. Is that the sign of apostasy? If so, we are in big trouble because we have change our doctrines quite a few times over our history. See “Line Upon Line” by signature book for details. Why is it that when we see a change in teachings we automatically assume it was for the worst? Could the church have been adapting itself to expand into the hellenistic world? Couldn’t they have merely been receiving more light and knowledge?

3) The people became unworthy and therefore the truth and authority were taken away. This sounds an awful lot like an excuse if you ask me. What evidence do we have that ALL priesthood leaders became unworthy? If we point to the occurance of the apostasy, we are only going in circles.

With regards to how God could have let this happen, we cannot merely brush this question aside with a “It happened before.” When did it happen before that there was no priesthood on the earth at all? Never, as far as I can tell. To say that God’s authority fell off the earth for over a millennium screams out for some sort of validation.

We can’t just say it was because of agency, because the agency we are talking about is God’s agency. Why didn’t He do something? Why did He wait so long? I believe it would be very difficult to show how originally the Christian message was accepted by thousands upon thousands of people as judged by the relative success of the apostles. But then as soon as they died, everybody all of a sudden rejected the gospel. One must come up with an explanation which also shows how they rejection was any different from the was people reject the gospel today, or how they have ever done so. Why hasn’t our agency thrown our church into apostasy? To say that it is because we are more righteous seems more than a little self serving.

I don’t know, Nate–even *I* can’t get worked up about this one, and I can usually do angst with the best of ‘em :)

I have no objection ;->. I don’t think that the Apostacy is a wholly unique theological problem, as I said in my original post. Certainly, it is very similar to the “problem” of not everyone having access to the Gospel even though the Church is on the earth. I suppose that I think that there is some meaningful distinction between an earth with no true church and an earth with a true church someplace. Of course, from the point of view of the person with no access or interaction to the church, the issue is identical. On the other hand, from the point of view of the whole earth, there is a difference.

“Nate, do you think this is a special case of Mormons not doing theology when they should, or is it just part of the general problem that we don’t do theology? There are a lot of “glaring theological question[s]” that we ignore in favor of historical treatment (or just plain ignore). ”

I don’t know that there is anything special about the absence of a sustained theological account of why the Apostacy was necessary, although its absence is interesting in that we do have several more or less sustained attempts to provide some historical account. Incidentally, I am not sure that theology is something that we aren’t doing but “should” be doing. I am not quite certain where the “should” comes from. I find these sorts of questions interesting and others do as well. Furthermore, there may be some for whom these sorts of questions present some sort of religious or spiritual crisis (haven’t met such a person yet, but no doubt there Mormons out there who stew in why-did-God-let-the-great-apostasy-happen angst.) and for whom some sort of relatively sophisticated disscussion might be religiously important or useful. For the most part, however, I simply think that these are interesting puzzles that I would like to know the answer to. I do think that reflection and thinking about the doctrines of the Restoration is a kind of worship, but I am by no means convinced that it is the most important kind.

Anyway, I agree that on the theological side the apostasy is just a special case of the general problem of why the gospel is and has been rarely available. But even if apostasy itself is not a unique problem, I still think the general problem is a serious one. The “manpower argument” is one answer, but I don’t think it’s adequate.